SUPPLIES OF FOOD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XL, Issue 1771, 3 January 1918, Page 4

SUPPLIES OF FOOD.

The desire on the part of Germany to secure control of the Russian wheat fields is easily intelligible, remarks the Otago Daily Times, The world is threatened with a. shortage of foodstuffs. The deficiency affects'practically all commodities. There is, as a result, universal anxiety respecting the supplies. Crops of cereals have been markedly under the average, and for such stocks as are available for export from the corn-producing countries the demand is, as a natural consequence, keen and strong. France, for example, is very short of cereals.' Her corn harvest was the smallest for fifty years. Though a quarter of a million men have been restored to the land this year from the army, the deficit is heavy in every crop, and can be made good only by the importation of 140,000,000 bushels of cereals, Italy is in much the same pliglit, and these countries, which before the war were mainly self-supporting in the matter of food production, are now in the market earnestly seeking supplies. There are, as is known, abundant supplies of wheat Ik Australia, awaiting shipment, but, Air Lloyd George said in a recent speech, that country “is almost ruled out” as a means of supplying the deficiencies because of “the enormous mileage” of seas that has to be crossed and because shipping must be utilised to ply between ports that are reached by shorter voyages. In Great Britain the need for the increase of production of cereals has been grappled with energetically, with the result that a deficit of 300,000 acres under cereals on the acreage of 1010 has been turned into an increase of 380,000. In other words, (he English farmer alone added 700,000 acres to the food-producing capacity of the country in (lie course of a feu months. The achievement was the more noteworthy because for most of the year the weather was against the farmer. Most impressive have been the warnings issued from responsible quarters in the Mother Country as to the need for the exercise of the strictest economy in the use of foodstuffs. “The harvests of the world,” Lord Rhondda, the Food Controller, said recently, “will not meet the requirements of ourselves and our allies during the next twelve months unless our present rate of consumption is materially reduced.” He added that the winter would he a time of the gravest anxiety unless the most rigid economy was exercised in every household. Rut the trouble will not be ended when the winter is over. There will continue to be a shortage of cereals. For this reason the British farmer is being urged (0 imprbye oit his achievement of this year. Mr Prolhero, President of the Board of Agriculture, put the ease in the following terms in a speech in the early part of October: —

in LOJB, whether peace is won or war prolonged, the world's exportable surplus of grain will probably run so short that wo shall not be able to purchase abroad the usual quantities of grain on which we live. Anyhow, we shall be short both of money and of ships. In all probability, then, corn will he scarce; certainly it will be dear to buy and difficult to carry. What, farmers mre asked to do is to get three million more acres under wheat, barley, oats, potatoes, and roots.

It was not suggested that the farmers should plough up an additional three million acres of pasture. What was asked was that the farmers should provide spine portion of the increased acreage from (heir 350,000 acres of bare fallow, or from their 2,500,000 acres of clover pud rotation grasses, or by taking two corn crops in succession, provided that they kept the land clean and in good heavy lu the same speech Mr Prolhero observed that there would be a probable shortage of meat supplies bojh during and after the war, and that if Dm consumption of meat were not reduced the position might become dangerous. On this fear he based a strong appeal for an increased production of.cereals. “The supply of food,” lie pointed out, “is of vital importance. It may decide the issue between defeat and victory, between ordered progress or revolution.”